


Aperitif

by SeymoreSinn



Series: Season One [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Canon Genderbending, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Hannibal is Mischa, Hannibal is a woman, I Blame Tumblr, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I just want to see what'll happen, Kinda?, Not A Fix-It, Not Beta Read, Will is a Woman, and vice versa, kind of, show rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 03:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5149391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeymoreSinn/pseuds/SeymoreSinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 1, Episode one: Aperitif -- in six acts.</p><p>"There is a bit of commotion on the ground when Professor Graham shimmies head-first out of a second story window, wiggles around, grabs the upper edge of the sill and levers herself up and out. Landing feet-first on the gable, facing away from the people bellow. Then she wraps her flannel jacket closer and squats down, looking back.</p><p>She’s still holding that pose, like a recalcitrant gargoyle, when Special Agent Crawford comes out to quiet the fuss.</p><p>For the first time since he decided to recruit her, Jack wonders if he made the right choice."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Champagne

_“Our heartaches collide,_

_Around the sounds_

_of fallen angels._

_We follow the sound_

_the weak go down_

_the train is rolling.”_

\- The Foreign Resort from Skyline/Decay (hear the whole song [here](https://youtu.be/hdLhlwzi06Q?list=PLnTayggwIhVGlpN9naMizy6gnxBNF7vcD))

* * *

 **Act One** _  
_

* * *

Wilhelmina Graham was 37, tall-ish, awkward and to smart for her own social life. She had dark curling hair and luminous blue eyes set in a charming angular face. She tended to give an impression of shy, wide-eyed sweetness, but usually that impression stopped - abruptly - the moment she started to speak.

Particularly when she was lecturing to her students at Quantico.

Particularly when she was lecturing with the aid of a digital projector full of crime scene photos.

“The house was invaded by direct forced entry to the front door, triggering the home alarum system and luring the occupants to their deaths.” Change slide.

“Thomas Marlow was shot twice through the throat, severing his carotid and jugular, leaving him alive just long enough to see what the killer had planed.” Change slide.

“Please take note of the blood spatter on the stairs and wall relative to the position of the body as found. What might this tell us about the killer? Did they anticipate Mr. Marlow approach from the stairway, or was the shot spontaneous? This could be vital in making supposition about the killer’s abilities.” Change slide.

“Theresa Marlow was also shot once through the throat, also with surgical precision. However, she remained alive for an extended period. Autopsy reports indicate the initial shot missed both carotid and jugular — but left her paralyzed but still conscious and able to feel pain.” Change slide.

“Blood spatter indicates she was attempting to contact the security company when she was shot. The company incident report logged the call as a false alarm. Questioning of the on-duty reporter revealed that he had spoken directly with the homeowner. With Mr. Marlow dead and Mrs. Marlow incapacitated, how could such a thing be possible?” She waits a few moments, to a chorus of nervous paper shuffling. Sigh. Change slide.

“Examination of the phone lines indicate the killer had tapped it some time earlier. No interruption of service was reported, showing that the tap was done with skill. The killer apparently recorded a false alarm call a week earlier and played it back for the technician.” Change slide.

The last slide. Mrs. Marlow, lying in a pool of her own blood. “I have set the scene of this killer’s desire, his design. Now I want you to tell me why he did this. We can see who this killer is by interpreting the evidence he leaves us. I want you to tell me what you believe Mr. and Mrs. Marlow did to deserve this in a killer’s mind. I want you to inhabit this killer’s consciousness, become them. Then I want you to tell me who you are. What is your design?” She let that hang in the air a moment.

Let it never be said that Wilhemina Graham didn’t have a tiny bit of drama in her soul. “Class dismissed.”

The shuffle took a moment to get started as the students shook off the lecture (or perhaps just finished writing out the assignment) Will let it get going before she brought up the lights and started gathering her things. If she timed the busy-work of organization just right students tended to keep questions brief. Something about speaking to somebody crouched under a desk disconnecting cables seemed to discourage the urge to ramble. No students stayed behind today. However, when she emerged there was an unexpected and equally unwelcome sight awaiting. Namely, one Jack Crawford, a big shot from Behavioral Science. Nothing good ever happened to her when people like him came around.

“Professor Graham. I’m Special Agent Jack Crawford. Head of the Behavioral Science Unit.”

“We’ve met.” She reminds him, unnecessarily. He remembers her perfectly well. She’d rather get the social song-and-dance out of the way so she could refuse whatever it was he wanted.

“Ah yes,” He’s a big man and he smiles down. “We had a disagreement about the museum when we opened it.”

She feels the constricting, clammy sensation of his paternalistic superiority and wants to run away and hide. Instead she turns away, zipping her laptop into it’s protective sleeve. “I ‘disagreed’ with what you named it.” She looks back at him, glasses slipping down her nose. The dark rims obscuring eye-contact. “The ‘Evil Minds Research Museum?’ Hammy, don’t you think?” She tries for mocking but probably only sounds tired.

He doesn’t answer immediately, she can feel that he’s pleased about something. “You’ve hitched your horse to a teaching post. I understand that you find it difficult to be sociable?”

She sighs and leans against the desk, crossing her legs over the ankles and arms over her chest. She looks at the floor. “While education is often a dialogue, it is usually not a conversation. I talk at them, not to them. It’s not an overtly social experience.”

He reaches out and gently slides her glasses back up to bridge of her nose. A gesture she has not grown resigned to in her time. She looks up and stubbornly manages to maintain eye contact for a good two seconds before looking down again. “Where do you place on the spectrum?”

She feels his pity like spit on her face and is suddenly done with this conversation. All she wants to do is get away, get away, get away. “That, is none of your business.” She turns her back on him. “Besides which I’m sure you have the information tucked away in whatever file you have on me.” She finishes shoving things haphazard into her bag.

Jack isn’t sure exactly what he said to upset her, but he didn’t get to be the head of his department by being insensitive. “My apologies Professor Graham, I didn’t come here to upset you. I came because you have a unique ability to empathize with the narcissistic and sociopathic.”

She sighs, exasperated. “I can empathize with anybody.” She can tell that he’s at least sincere in his desire not to alienate her. “It has less to do with a disorder than an over-active imagination.” She pulls the strap of her bag over her head.

“Professor Graham.” He’s trying to be respectful with the use of her title. “May I borrow your imagination?”

She stops fussing with the bag. Yes, he's been an ass, but she can feel something in him. Slipping out in the tone of his voice. A brief shimmer of…desperation? She sighs again, rubbing her hand over her face, further displacing her glasses. “What for?”

* * *

He gives her the broad strokes as they exit the building and set out across the Quad.

“Eight girls have been abducted from eight Minnesota campuses in the last eight months.”

“Last I’d heard there were seven. When did he tag the eighth?”

“I got the word about five minutes before I came to see you.”

“You’re calling them abductions because you haven’t found any bodies?”

“Less than that. No bodies. No parts of bodies. Nothing that comes out of bodies.”

“Then those girls weren’t taken from where you think they were taken.”

Crawford stops and looks at her severely. “Then where were they taken from?”

Graham keeps walking. “I don’t know. Someplace else.” And lucky her if that doesn’t shut him up for the rest of the walk to his Quantico office, and she gets a moment to prepare herself.

Once there she drops her bag and blazer onto one of the visitors chairs and goes directly to the map on the wall. It’s no more or less like any of thousands of such maps. Tacks marking locations, threads running to pictures, vinyl numbers, torn out notebook pages and print-outs, colorful sticky notes adding and amending. Typical. And yet…she looks more closely at the pictures, studies them.

Crawford is speaking.

“They were all taken on a Friday so they wouldn’t be reported missing until Monday. Whatever he’s doing to cover his tracks he needs the weekend to do it.” He leans in and places a tack on the map, steps around Graham and tapes up another picture with a vinyl number 8. She looks at the photo, it looks like a senior picture. Something tugs at her mind. “Elise Nicholes,” He supplies. “St. Cloud State on the Mississippi. Disappeared on a Friday. Was supposed to cat-sit for her parents over the weekend. Never returned.”

He does a very good job of keeping his voice neutral. She could almost believe in his professional detachment. Almost. “One through seven are dead, don’t you think? He isn’t keeping them around, now he’s got himself a new one.” She waves a dismissive hand at the other pictures, keeping her mental focus on what he does next.

“We are focusing on Elise, yes.” There. That little tug. She can feel it. He want’s to catch this killer. Badly. She closes her eyes a moment takes a deep breath through her nose and thinks. He’s not in this just because it’s his job. Something in this case has gotten to him, actually to *him* and not his bullshitty superiority complex. He’s invested in the outcome. He genuinely wants some kind of justice for these girls.

Will suddenly finds herself much better disposed towards Jack.

She takes off her glasses and tucks them into her shirt pocket before she turns back to him. “They’re all very ‘Mall of America,’ wholesome girl-next-door types, outdoors-y. Lots of wind-chapped cheeks.”

Jack nods, “all white. All the same hair color, eye color. All roughly the same age, height and build.” He looks at her curiously as she stares into the middle distance. “What is it about these girls?”

“It isn’t about all of them,” Will says thoughtfully and looks at the map. “It’s about one of them.” She leans in the look more closely at the photo of the first girl taken. “He’s like…Willy Wonka. Each girl is like a candy bar, and hidden amongst all these candy bars is something special. Which if we follow the metaphor - would be his Golden Ticket.”

“So is he warming up for his Golden Ticket, or reliving what he did to her?”

“She wouldn’t be the first one, or the last. It would make her importance to obvious. He’d want to hide how special she is. I mean-“ she cocks an eyebrow at him. “Wouldn’t you? I would, in his place.”

“Professor Graham, I’d like you to get closer to this.”

“You have Dr. Heimlich at Harvard and Dr. Bloom at Georgetown. They do the all the same things and have more impressive credentials.”

“The don’t do what you do. You have a very specific way of thinking about these things.”

She frowns at him. “Has there been a lot of discussion about my ‘specific way of thinking?’” A question lined with tiny, bitter barbs.

He sidesteps the question and doesn’t care if she knows it. “You make jumps you can’t explain-“

“No.” She cuts him off. “The evidence explains it.”

“Then help me find some evidence.”

He’s pleading. Not openly, but she can feel it in his voice, in the weight of his eyes on her. “That may require me to be sociable.” She’s sulking, just a little. This is really not how she was hoping to spend her free time this semester.

“Professor Graham…”

“Please,” she sighs. “Just call me Will.” She glances up, meeting his eyes for a fleeting second before she turns her gaze back to the map. “Where do we go first?”

* * *

The Nicholes house was exactly the sort of suburban domicile that made Will at once contemptuous and envious. Part of her hated it. The outside was a neat brick facade and landscaped yard. Doors and windows clean painted and in good repair. Inside was the pastel-tinted gloom of what she rather causticly thought of as ‘interiors by Costco!’ But there was another part of her envied the comfort and ease of living the house and it’s appearance implied.

Mr. and Mrs. Nicholes sat in their living-room on a sofa that was lack-of-real-taste beige. A boring couch that was just a boring couch, not somebody’s regular bed. The walls were painted a simpering yellow with no cracks or stains or peeled strips hanging down like sad party streamers. The baseboard heaters were clean and functional. There was probably food in the fridge, a sheaf of take-out menus next to the paid-up bills in the letter holder by the working telephone.

The home was lived in, but felt soulless and dull beneath it’s respectable polish of solid middle-class luxury. Which was, admittedly, something she’d only ever experienced second-hand.

On occasions like this.

Maybe that colors her perceptions some.

So she lets Jack do the talking, murmuring soothing words at them.

Strangely enough (to Will anyway) it’s the husband who seems most desperately hopeful. Mrs. Nicholes is almost resigned, as if she senses that there’s no hope.

That void of feeling presses against Will’s mind, and she swallows past a sticky lump of guilt, looking into a pseudo-antique curio cabinet and staring at the vapid faces of Precious Moments figurines.

“She might’ve gone off by herself." Mr. Nicholes is rambling. "She’d do that, if she was upset, maybe. I know she didn’t like living in her dorm. Maybe it was that and the pressure of school finally got to her. She did always like trains. Maybe she just got on a train and just -“

“She looks just like the other girls.” Mrs. Nicholes voice is soft and empty, but it cuts off her husbands nervous speculation.

“Yes. She fits the profile.” Jack agrees.

Will closes her eyes and breathes deep through her nose. She lets it out through her mouth and calls Elise’s photograph to the forefront of her memory. Long hair, arrow straight, heavy and thick. Auburn so dark it’s nearly black, cherry Coke in a bottle — glass as clear and blue as eyes. Will can see her now. Walking alone along the tracks of a train, rolling forever across the Minnesota prairie under the dome of an endless sky. The wind chaps her plain-but-pretty face red along the plains of her skin, her long colt’s legs carrying her away toward the horizon.

“Could Elise still be alive?” Mr. Nicholes voice cracks ever so little. Pleading to them.

Pleading for a future that will likely never come.

“There’s simply no way of knowing.” Jack prevaricates.

Will comes back to the moment, eyes pointed at a figurine of a little girl clutching a kitten.

“How’s the cat?”

She can feel the abrupt shift in their attention, Jack's eyes at her back.

“What?” Mr. Nicholes asks.

Will turns to them, glasses slipping down, keeping her eyes firmly on his right shoe. “How was the cat? Elise was supposed to cat-sit. Did the cat seem weird when you got back? Fussy or demanding? He’d’ve been hungry if he didn’t eat all weekend.”

He blinks. “Um…no. Not that I remember.”

She looks at Jack’s upper lip, dark and needing a shave, tilts her head.

Jack blinks, looks over at the Nicholes, “a moment please.” And motions Will to follow as he steps into the foyer.

“He took her here.” Will says, to low to carry to the couple on the sofa.

“Explain.” His only reaction, no change of expression.

So she tries. “She got on the train. Made it here to feed the cat, Jack.” She glances sideways, nervous. “He took her from here.”

Jack nods slowly, once, and takes the phone out of his inside pocket. He looks back in at the parents as he hits the speed dial. “The Nicholes house is now a crime scene. I need ERT over here ASAP. Get me Katz, Zeller, Price, and whatever photographer is handy at the field office right now.” He makes no attempt to lower his voice.

Mr. Nicholes looks like he might vomit. Mrs. Nicholes simply absorbs this new violation, blank-eyed and pale.

“Why is our house now a crime scene?” He asks, voice breaking in earnest now.

Jack looks over at Will, but she can’t think of any good way to explain to these strangers. So she just plows forward. “May I see your daughters room?”

Mr. Nicholes looks like he can’t decide if he’s going to scream or cry. “The police were up there this morning when we filed the missing persons report.” He holds it together, but only just.

Then Mrs. Nicholes lays her hand on his forearm. “Just…show her up, John…please.” Her voice is soft and full of tears.

He flinches at the sound of her voice, hesitates. Then he nods. Then he goes, and Will follows, slips a pair of nitrile gloves from her pocket as walks.

She absently pulls them on as the make it to the landing and find the cat of earlier question. He's chirping and pawing away at the beige-carpeted gap at the bottom of one of the three white wood doors.

Will feels a moment of quiet hysteria welling up inside her. She's wondering if this has suddenly become some fucked up Monty Hall parody with fat mackerel tabby-cats behind two of the doors and a serial killer waiting for the Big Winner! She wonders faintly if that means she should change her choice of doors and has to stifle the urge to laugh.

Then Mr. Nicholes reaches for the nob and Will snaps back to the moment. “Please! Mr. Nicholes —“ she slips in front of him. “I need you to keep your hands in your pockets so you don’t touch anything.”

He frowns at her, clearly not understanding. “But we’ve been in and out of here all day…” he sounds bemused. Like a child who doesn’t understand why he has to go to bed or eat his vegetables.

Will struggles, for a moment, to think of some way to make it easier for him. “Well, you can…hold the cat. If it makes things easier.”

He looks more confused than ever, but Gods-be-good — he does pick up the cat.

Will opens the door wide and feels an almost shocking lack of shock.

Because there is Elise Nicholes in a white cotton nighty trimmed with eyelet lace. Laid out peacefully, tucked safely into bed.

For a moment everything is quiet and still, and Will thinks the girl almost looks like she is sleeping.

The curtains billow in the open window. Swell big-bellied in the night breeze and slowly deflate.

There is no answering rise and fall in Elise’s chest.

“Elise!” Mr. Nicholes voice is elated. Disbelieving and full of so much love.

Will draws the curtains of her mind, trying to shut out the heartache she knows is coming. “Mr. Nicholes.” She grabs his shoulders and sets her weight against him as he tries to go to her. He’s eager, but she’s in better shape and has a height advantage. “I need you to leave.” She tells him slowly holding his gaze as hard as she can.

He looks at her angrily. He’d probably strike at her if his arms weren’t full of squirming cat. He breaks away from her eyes and looks at his daughter.

Will can feel the precise moment that reality sinks in. When he notices the mottling grey pallor of her skin, the blood on her nightgown. How absolutely, perfectly, unnaturally still she is.

“Oh my god.” He chokes and slumps weakly against Will.

The cat drops from his grasp.

He, at least, can land on his feet.


	2. Vermouth de Chambéry

_“The doctor put him in the dark of ether._

_He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath._

_And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright._

_No one believed. They listened at his heart._

_Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it._

_No more to build on there. And they, since they_

_Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.”_

\- Robert Frost from _“Out,_ _Out—”_ (read the full poem [here](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238122))

* * *

**Act Two**

* * *

At a crime scene, time has no meaning or direction. Everything remains in suspension, a perpetual here and now. A bubble within which nothing changes. In which nothing can change. Until you step outside and the illusion pops and you find yourself in a future you cannot account for. It all takes some getting used to. A crime scene is a riot of light and sound and color. Sirens and people talking, shutters and flash and the high, faint whine of electronics just at the upper limit of hearing. The flood lights bleach the colors of everything it touches, except the blazing strobe of red-and-blue of vehicle lights. The lightening strike of photo flash, rendering everything impossibly brighter. It whites out the vision and the nose can take its turn to overwhelm the mind. The cool night air smells of encroaching autumn overlaid with the amalgamated chemical stench of wrongful death: hand sanitizers, nitrile, latex, Luminal, Tyvex, ozone, and the pervasive, synthetic Band-Aid oder of autoclaved materials. There are also smaller whiffs of more human aromas. The personal smell of a home unprepared for company. Of people dragged suddenly from sleep or from slovenly evenings in. A quick swill of mouthwash and a handful of cologne, a swipe of deodorant under yesterday’s clothes — the best they can do in the mad rush to a crime scene or before the crime scene arrives. It competes with the scent of badly prepared coffee hastily taken black. It’s cloying and awful and familiar for Will, but it never completely overwhelms those other terrible and familiar smells.

The copper/iron/salt of blood is tangy and sharp - it provides counterpoint to the sweetish sulfur of incipient decay.

Jack is speaking.

Will wrenches her awareness back, out of the overwhelming associations of her ears and eyes and nose. Pulling out of her hind-brain and into her grey matter. She tries - very hard - to stay human.

“We’ll come back when you say. Take your time. When you’re ready to talk, you talk. If you don’t feel like talking…you don’t talk.”

She nods minutely, and is dimly aware of Crawford herding people out of the room. One woman goes with much grumbling.

Will breathes deep. In through her nose, out through her mouth. Again. Again. Again. There’s a gathering tightness behind her face, a fitful sensation in her guts. Her vision shimmers. She feels a little like she’s rocking. Standing on the deck of a ship at sea.

She drags on hand through her hair while the other fumbles around in her pockets. Tangled in her car keys and lip balm and loose change is a travel tube of aspirin from the airport. She digs it out and opens it. There’s two left. She chews them dry. Letting the bitterness flood her mouth. It helps, it’s grounding, settling to her stomach. She swallows and closes her eyes again. In through her nose, out through her mouth.

She reaches out with her mind, her senses, searching for the way into this killer.

A soft breeze moves across the back of her neck. She turns her face to it, inhaling the chill of the late-at-night.

She opens her eyes. The window was already open, curtains billowing. It’s cool, bordering on cold. The heater had been on down stairs.

* * *

There is a bit of commotion on the ground when Professor Graham shimmies head-first out of a second story window, wiggles around, grabs the upper edge of the sill and levers herself up and out. Landing feet-first on the gable, facing away from the people bellow. Then she wraps her flannel jacket closer and squats down, looking back.

She’s still holding that pose, like a recalcitrant gargoyle, when Special Agent Crawford comes out to quiet the fuss.

For the first time since he decided to recruit her, Jack wonders if he made the right choice.

* * *

Will sits back on her haunches, forearms braced over knees, staring intently through the window. She’s holding her mind open, thoughts still, reaching out with her senses. Seeking, seeking…

Her eyes drift shut. There’s a brief moment of disequalibrium while her body adjusts it’s balance. It settles. She breaths. She looks for the way in.

In her minds eye she sees a old-fashioned silver demitasse spoon, dark with tarnish. A thread of scarlet silk tied through the filigree on the handle. In her head, the pendulum swings.

Once. Twice.

There is no crowd on the lawn bellow. There are no agents or technicians prowling the house. There are no bereaved parents in the kitchen.

Three. Four.

There is only the Hunt, and his Prey is waiting, unaware. All around the world is sleeping peaceful, a warm suburban night. The moon is waning. The summer is waning. Soon fall will come in earnest.

Five. Six.

This girl will never see it.

Seven. Eight.

Then it happens. She’s there. With the killer. In the killer. In his place. They are together at the foot of the white metal bedstead. The girl laid out before them. Unwary prey, the flesh is young and sweet, shrouded in white. They set upon her. A leap and they land on their knees on Elise’s chest. The joyful crunch-snap of ribs a delicious compliment to her pained and startled cry. Hands to her throat and she really starts to panic, frantic but she is rapidly weakening. She tries to scream, but their hands constrict, thumbs pressed hard against the delicate arch of her throat. The trachea compresses and she cannot draw enough air to make any sound at all.

A voice intrudes.

She’s wrenched back into the present and her own body with a sudden sense of disorientation. Nausea hits her like a sucker-punch and she’s shaking and gasping, sweating hot-and-cold all over. She feels the wet fracture of the girl’s hyoid echoing through the bones of her hands. Everything is to bright. She is standing in the bed room. How is she back inside?

“-wrote the standard monograph on time of death by insect activity!” A woman is speaking. She’s shorter than Will, with black hair pulled severely back. She has a face like a porcelain doll, a placid impression marred by an air of mischief in the almond shape of her black eyes.

“What?” Will tries to focus.

“You’re Professor Wilhelmina Graham, right?” She asks settling her weight on one hip, the fabric of her jumpsuit pulling and wrinkling. Purple nitrile stretched taut over her knuckles.

“Special Investigator.” Will is answering out of reflex. The tag on the jumpsuit reads ‘Katz.’

“You’re not real FBI?” Katz eyes Will up and down. Obviously noting the lack of a badge.

“Strict screening criteria.” Will swallows against the bile on the back of her tongue.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to detect psychological instability.” A pause, she smirks, cocks an eyebrow. “you unstable?” Her voice was excited, making the word seem almost salacious. As though whatever troubled Will was somehow entertaining.

The only response Will can muster is a sudden pulse of blind, seething, rage.

“You are not supposed to be in here!” Jack’s voice is like a thunderclap.

Will’s anger evaporates as quickly and unexpectedly as it came. It leaves her feeling empty. She’s dizzy and tired and her head is starting to throb in time to her erratic heartbeat. Her mouth tastes like bile and spent adrenaline.

“Look, you threw me out just as I found something.” Katz points at Jack. “There are a number of puncture wounds that look like they go through the full thickness of the body. I’d just pulled some foreign tissue out when you told us to leave.” She squints at Jack. “Price identified it as antler velvet. I looked in the door but she wasn’t here,” she jabs a thumb at the other woman. “So I came back in.”

Jack raises an eyebrow at her. “You think she was gored by a deer?”

“Deer and elk will try to pin anything that attacks them,” comes a man’s voice from the door. “That’s how they’d kill a coyote or a fox.” This one has an identical suit with ‘Zeller’ on the name tag.

Another man, older, appears behind him. “And male deer would still have antlers this time of year. They’d also be pumped full of testosterone, extra aggressive. But they’d have shed the velvet already.” This one’s suit says ‘Price.’

Even though she still feels sick, Will feels a vague stir of memory.

“I thought cause of death was strangulation?” Jack asks.

“It is.” Price and Katz say together.

“Pretty sure the wounds we’re seeing are post-mortem.” Zeller adds.

“The killer put it there on purpose.” Will didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud until everyone was looking at her.

“Put what where?” Jack prompts.

“Antler velvet is used in folk medicine as a tonic to promote healing.” Will tries to elaborate. Pulling her thoughts into something approaching order, rather than a jumble of scattered associations. “He was trying to undo what he did. As much as he could anyway.”

“So he…regrets what he did? Puts her body back where he killed her and tries to heal her wounds?” Jack tries to help.

“Whatever he did to the others, whatever he wanted to do to her. He…couldn’t” She’s looking fixedly at the dead girl in her bed. “This is…an apology.”

“Is she his Golden Ticket?” Jack asks.

Will can only shake her head, which throbs viciously in response. She winces, squeezing her eyes shut.They are all looking at her expectantly.

“Does anybody have any aspirin?” Is the only response she can muster. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to be *slightly* more accurate in my biology/crime scene practices than the actual show was. It always bugged me that Team Sassy Science were in plain clothes at scenes.
> 
> A note on timing - I'm placing the opening episode in late summer/early fall, a few weeks into the school year. So yes, boy deer would still be antlered, but un-velveted. (or at least they are where I live - which is not Minnesota)
> 
> Also - the story will probably diverge from canon, I don't know how mush as yet. But since I want to elaborate on some relationships (like Will & Abigail) and B-plots (Bee Lobotomy Lady for example) the stories in the first season will probably stretch into the second.
> 
> My plan for now is to follow Bryan Fuller's original plan for the show to happen over 7 seasons.


	3. Pernod

_“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;_

_I fled Him, down the arches of the years;_

_I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways_

_Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears_

_I hid from Him, and under running laughter._

_Up vistaed hopes I sped”_

\- Francis Thompson from _The Hound of Heaven_ (read the full poem [here](http://www.bartleby.com/236/239.html))

* * *

**Act Three: Interlude**

* * *

 **Baltimore, MD. Afternoon, the previous Friday**.

Dr. Mischa Lecter was a tall, spare woman with pale blonde hair (this season), dark eyes (always) and a classical, almost ageless face. She was somewhere north of 40 and had a stellar reputation in the medical, psychiatric and cultural arts communities up and down the East Coast. She was known for her zen-like calm, endless patience, razor-sharp mind and exquisite taste.

Just now, however; Dr. Mischa Lecter having a difficult day.

She could endure through any manner of pain or hardship, overcome any sort of privation, cope with rudeness and discourtesy. Anything — anything at all, really, except tedium.

And today was a day with only a very few patients, and every one of them dull to the point of tedium.

First one Mr. Raspail, who’s therapy had stalled some weeks before and who’s garden variety neuroses were wearing thin.

The afternoon she’d meant to spend at her drawings had instead been taken up by an emergency phone session with another neurotic little man, Mr. Froideveaux. A man for whom the term ‘emergency’ was unfortunately broad. He’d agreed to discuss it at their next meeting later in the week. The thought of another hour with him is enough, today, to pluck the taunt harp-strings of her self-control.

She locks the office door after her last client leaves (aging housewife dealing with an empty nest and a philandering retired husband - deadly dull) and pours herself a glass of wine. She sits on the chaise before the windows,open to catch the breeze.

She inhales the scent of turning seasons, summer bleeding into autumn, the smell of time rolling ever forward. It reminds her of entropy’s relentless direction, forcing the past into the future. Always forging ahead. The changing of the seasons always did make her maudlin.

She buries her nose in the wineglass in self-defense, inhaling the aged wood and hot spice of old vine Zinfandel. It calms her. She sips, letting it wash slowly back over her tongue.

She hears people outside on the sidewalk bellow her windows. Small feet running. A group of children. A laugh drifts up, clear and bright as a treble bell. A little boy laughs and runs in the late afternoon sunshine.

The wine turns to vinegar in her mouth.

She sighs and stands. Closes the windows and drapes. Then crosses back to her desk, heels clicking on the dark wood floor. She sets the wine glass aside and looks down at her abandoned drawing implements. She considers the evening before her. It would behove her to spend it in meditation. Or perhaps contemplating the past and the future in the dense, intricate language of abstract algebra. She could spend time shoring up and expanding the vast construct of her memory palace.

Just now, however, those ideas lacks appeal.

Her body feels constrained, tense. Her muscles filled with a phantom soreness, not from real fatigue, but rather a lack of it.

Tonight would be a good night for less cerebral activities. It calls for a physical release to ease her restlessness. She thinks of the club -- with it’s pool, it’s indoor track. Solitary pursuits. Simple activity that burns energy but does not engage much of her mind. Again the idea lacks a certain something.

Then she thinks of her motorcycle. The British racing-green Triumph awaiting detailing and maintenance before being tucked away for the winter. The air had been mild enough today that she’d left the windows open. A ride would be just the thing. Her contacts across the Onion server have told her about a place out along the highway. An underbelly full of smoke and anonymity...

She leaves the wine glass nearly full on her desk.

* * *

 **Dulles International Airport, VA. Late Monday night/EarlyTuesday morning**.

Will sat in her old Volvo station-wagon in the short-term parking lot, eyes closed and leaning back in the seat. The flight back was something of a blur. A two hour haze of nausea and fatigue, punctuated only by bitter aspirin, annoyed text messages from Agent Crawford and an overly-concerned flight attendant who just *could not stop* asking if she was “ok.” The man was some blond prick who could not take a fucking hint.

It was always some blond prick (what was it with her and blonds?)

After another couple of aspirin (she was going to do her stomach a permanent damage she was sure) she felt steady enough to start the drive home. Back to the safety of her little farmhouse tucked into the quiet Middle of Nowhere.

And right now the Middle of Nowhere seems like an excellent place to be. Capital letters and all.

Most people would consider her commute a hassle, at least an hour away from just about anything, but she loves it. Relishes the solace, solitude, a blissful surcease in the background static of other people and their unfettered emotions.

Even this late drive is sweet to her. Radio off, all the windows down, rolling along under the full moon so she can inhale the serenity of the woods and the night.

It’s peaceful, with her mind mostly checked out. Thinking only of here and now.

Then she sees something moving on the road ahead.

A dog is lopping along the shoulder, trailing a frayed length of rope from it’s neck. Will takes her foot off the gas, letting the car coast until she’s alongside.

The dog is shaggy, quite the fur-ball, in fact. With a plumed tail fluffing pale with each ground-eating stride. She *thinks* its a red-and-black brindle, but the night is too dark and the dog too filthy to know for sure. Encrusting dirt aside, it seems to be in relatively good shape.

She calls out to it, voice low and cajoling. “Hello.” The dog spared her a passing glance, and ran on.

“Hey!” She presses a little on the gas and pulls ahead, turning the car to block the road once she’s far enough away that she’s sure she won’t hit it. She throws on the hazards and waits a moment before slowly easing the door open. “Hey, buddy…” The dog stops, sniffs the air in her direction, then wheels around and heads back they way it came.

Obviously a little persuasion is in order.

She starts the engine and flips around to follow the dog. It’s heading in the general direction of the local gas station/convenience store. There would be persuasion enough to be had there.

Patil’s Market is open 24 hours, the only place anywhere near Wolf Trap that is, really. Over time she’s come to know the family that runs it. Puja is on duty behind the counter, wearing a faded black t-shirt with ‘I Heart DarkScore Lake’ blazoned on it. She’s the eldest daughter, older than Will herself, in fact. And Will loves that fact that Puja feels absolutely zero pressure to make small talk. She just lets Will get her shit and leave.

Will buys an assortment of truck-stop meat products; jerky and canned Vienna sausage and violently pink wieners, whatever would get a dog’s attention.

The rest of the pack will have treats tonight too.

* * *

 **Somewhere in the Maryland countryside. Early the previous Saturday morning**.

Standing in a small clearing, under the moon, bright and nearly full, Mischa Lecter breathes deep.

The night is still mild, but the temperature is falling slowly, drifting down the thermometer like a feather. She can smell a faint whiff of smoke, the salt tang of ashes on the breeze. She’s dressed head-to-foot in black motorcycling gear, her platinum hair pulled back and enclosed in a leather pony-wrap. She's wearing gloves and boots. Snug and comfortable, enfolded by the night.

Fall has well and truly arrived. She can smell it, taste it, pooling cool in the back of her mouth.

In one hand she held a long black knife.

In the other she held a cloth bag, like one might store a motorcycle helmet in. It was dripping dark and splotchy in the moonlight.

She also held a bright, weightless feeling in her chest. Her mind pervaded with an airy calm and stillness, and there was no place she’d rather be than here. Smiling and happy within her skin and brain, flesh and bone.

She held onto that feeling as she began the walk back to her motorcycle. Fixing it in her memory palace.

On the way she passed a shed. She’d noticed it coming into the clearing, but had been to otherwise distracted to pay it much attention.

Now, though, she caught a whiff of animals.

The outbuilding was clearing filthy, small and windowless.

She thought it must be a dreadful tedium to the creatures inside, that the night is to beautiful for anything to be trapped inside.

She thought also, that it might provide a convenient way to dispose of a few things.

The shed door is latched, but not locked. She flipped it up with the tip of her dagger, then hooked it through the loop of the handle and opened the door in a seemingly careless motion.

The animal stink became almost overwhelming.

The shed was full of straw matted with excrement and worse. There where a number of dogs lying on it and nested in it.

They growl and whimper and cower.

Some are badly scared, a few have open wounds, two or three look fairly undamaged, all seem under-nourished. Bait dogs for training the fighters, some old and some new.

Well, they were no longer needed for that purpose.

There were rings drilled into the walls. The dogs attached with ropes.

She stepped inside.

The dogs subsided, waiting. Watching her in a fog of learned helplessness as Mischa slowly made a circuit of the shed, picking booted feet through the filth, cutting the ropes as she went.

The dogs watched her, wary. Then as a body they seemed to realize their freedom and were gone.

As she left the shed she watched the dogs loping away in the dark. A few making for the trees, most heading back through the clearing, following the scent of red flesh and blood.

She smiled, and continued down to the path through the woods. The forest smelled so wonderfully of green things and wet decay, the cycle of life and death.

In her buoyant mood she decided that autumn really was a wonderful season.

Perhaps it was time for a new look. Perhaps she’d change her hair for fall.

* * *

 **Wolf Trap VA. Early Tuesday morning**.

It was either far to late or far to early, it was difficult to gauge.

But in the fields around her little farmhouse, with late crickets chirping, the moon and stars shining down, time seemed pretty irrelevant.

After — finally — getting the mutt into the station wagon and home, she’d driven around to the back of her little house and dragged all the ‘new dog’ equipment from the shed.

The stray watched from the car as Will had taken the collapsable hose into the mud room and hooked it up to the hot water heater.

Out again on the porch she up-ended the galvanized washtub with her foot, dumping all manner of small things across the worn gray planks.

She found the shampoo, the chipped Pyrex jug, then extricated a tangle of harnessing.

With the help of a few strips of jerky she got the stray (a he - as a quick check confirmed - she’d make an appointment to get him fixed) tied to the railing while she set up the bath.

It took the better part of two hours and three changes of water in the washtub, but she managed to get him clean. He *was* red and black, with a few pale spots visible through the fluffy damp.

She toweled him off and left him tied for a moment to let the six resident dogs out for a run. While the others barreled around the yard, Will used a hair dryer to finish the job she’d started with the towel.

The hair drier had been purchased specifically for the dogs. Wilhelmina’s hair, cropped short around her face and to the nape of her neck, was too curly to benefit from it’s regular application. Even if she’d been inclined to put that kind of attention into her appearance.

She wasn’t.

It was funny, almost, how she’d managed to stay a “tom-boy” (her father’s words) even after she’d hit her teenage years and everyone’d expected her to put paid to it and start acting like a woman.

Will had expected it too, as she grew.

She’d waited in childish anticipation of the day when puberty would finally take its stranglehold and make her care about dating and make-up and clothes.

It never had.

The closest it had come was the one time she’d had to ask her dad for money to buy a box of Kotex.

She’d blushed like a stop light when he’d asked what she’d needed the money for.

She remembered the way he’d looked at her, seeming to notice for the first time that she was tall enough at 15 to look him in the eye. She’d suddenly felt her own appearance acutely - her flat-chested gangly-ness in his handed down shirt and canvas pants. She’d been aware of the weight of her second-hand glasses, the uncombed mass of her haphazard ponytail pulled through the back of her ball-cap.

She’d never felt more uncomfortably exposed than in that moment of her father’s blank scrutiny.

Then he’d turned away, tugged his wallet loose and folded a bill into her hand without looking at her again. Saying that if she was going down the store anyways she could bring him back some smokes while she was at it.

For some reason she still found that to be worse than even the hard-eyed look from the old lady at the check-out stand. A look given to a skinny, too-young Will carrying a huge box of Kotex and a carton of Winston Reds.

Will comes back to herself, standing on the porch, the new dog in a crate and a tumbler of whiskey and ice in hand.

She doesn’t remember doing either of these things. She looks at her drink, shrugs, takes a sip and whistles the pack to her.

“Everybody, this is Winston.” She says once they’re all arranged.

She looks directly at Winston and delibrately says his new name, clear and comanding. “This is everybody.”

Charly barks, but she silences him with a gentle “tsch!”

They settle, and begin to hesitently sniff at the newcomer. Winston sniffs back, curious.

Will sighs a laugh, and relaxes back into her porch chair, to finish her drink before bed.


	4. Amontillado

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OMG I've been dying to write Jack Crawford in the Ladies' Room.
> 
> I feel better for having got that off my chest.

“ _Take what you want, says God. Take it, and pay for it.”_

\- Spanish proverb

* * *

**Act Four**

*** * ***

  
Beverly Katz was a patient woman, but this case was beginning to wear it thin.  
No foreign skin on the fingernail scrapings. No unaccounted-for hairs or fibers. No prints, no blood, no semen, no saliva.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

She’d given up on the corpse for the moment, waiting on Pathology so she can do a review of the autopsy report with Jack’s new “profiler” and the rest of her team.

Oh what fun that would be.

She turned her attention to the textiles instead. Gave the blankets and sheets to her techs to check for trace, then set up a collection rig for the nightgown. She honestly wasn’t expecting to find much. The virginal white cotton would show most anything to the naked eye, and aside from the blood it was pristine.

The UV light scan came up goose-egg, naturally.

Beverly sighed, changed her goggles for a face shield and busted out the swabs.

She is a patient woman. Intent and focused, but this case has her annoyed and so distracted that she almost misses the little twist of metal the swab catches on.

Almost.

A delicate turn of the wrist, practiced and sure, loosens the shard from its sticky nest of clotted blood and drops it on the collection paper with a tiny ‘plink.’

She looks at it for a moment, almost surprised. Then a smile curls up one side of her mouth.

“Got you.” She whispers.

  
* * *

Will likes to run. She likes to devote an hour to track or trail whenever she can. Generally she prefers the trails on her farm and the surrounding woods.

Not today.

Today finds her on the track at the Academy, running lap after lap, sweat straggling her curls and streaking her clothes. Normally her jog is steady, measured, but this morning she’s pushing for speed.

She’s not a great sleeper. Prone to the restless dreams produced by an over-active imagination. Moving her bed to the front room had helped. Being able to see the door and the dogs and sky out the big windows had proved soothing.

Last night was worse than it had been in a long time.

_The mattress dips, as though another body has rolled into bed. There is no fear, but she turns to look. A young woman is beside her, curled on her side, sleeping peacefully in a white eyelet nightdress, her hands folded under her cheek._

_Will rolls sideways, reaching out with trembling hands —_

_The girl’s eyes open slow, languorous, their sweet brightness filmed over with translucent white._

_The covers slowly fall away and the girl arches, curling over onto her back as pink-ish brown stains begins to seep through the pale cotton…_

She’d awakened with a nauseous lurch, drenched in sweat.

For a heart-stopping moment she thought she’d been drenched in blood.

She’d peeled off her soaked tank and spread out towels, tried to go back to sleep. Eventually she’d kicked the blankets off and struggled out of her clingy-damp shorts only to realize she was not only sweaty but wet, too. She shivered with disgust, threw them to the floor and rolled up in a bath-sheet like nightmare burrito. She had managed, naked, cold and also — somehow — too warm, to drift in and out of a light doze for another couple hours before she’d finally given it up.

She’d gotten up, stuttered through her morning routine. Dogs out, dog food down, change water, throw on clothes and running shoes. She’d gone down the back steps, whistling the pack to her, (watching to see how Winston was adjusting) taking long strides through the tall grass. Her fields where autumn gold, chased in silver hoarfrost in the dim pre-dawn light.

Then she’d come to the mouth of her river-trail and shocked backward so fast all the dogs jumped.

There was a pool of blood in the dirt.

She looks at the dogs.

They watch her, anxious.

She blinks, looks back at the blood.

it’s just a shallow puddle in the dirt, a thin skin of ice around the edges.

She went back to the house, shivering.

She had a glass of water by the kitchen window, wished that she still smoked. She made coffee instead and brought the dogs in. Warmth and lolling tongues and fur made her feel a little more herself.

So she’d decided to drive to work early, and run the track there.

She stopped to grab breakfast and more coffee on the way, but when she brought her breakfast sandwich to her mouth all she could smell was something akin to the aroma of a dirty aquarium. She tossed it onto the passenger seat, feeling faintly queasy.

So she carefully sipped her coffee black, caffeine fueling her disquiet all the way to Quantico.

The restless, uneasy feeling continued to chase her in the bright morning air.

Hence her to-fast morning jog.

She hit a patch of slightly looser dirt right at the head of her stride — heel first. Her forward leg skidding out, her off leg bending just enough for her to go knee-first onto the cold packed earth of the track. Followed by both palms, forearms and chest.

“Shit.” She says to herself. Unfolding her long frame upwards to stand, she takes inventory.

Her palms are skinned and they sting a little, but otherwise fine. She’s managed to tear her left knee open and get some git embedded under the skin. Not fine.

She stands panting, watching blood trickle down her shin. It doesn’t hurt the way she thinks it should. Worse though is that she can smell the blood in the still, humid air. The coopery smell reminding her of her aborted breakfast.

She fights the urge to gag by taking off again, finding her stride again quickly. She knows it’ll start to hurt in earnest soon enough. But right now she want’s to keep going, keep moving, out-run this restless uneasy feelings.

 _Walk it off, Billy!_  Her father’s voice whispers in her ear, a memory of other hurts, other places, other men.

At least she knows the blood on her white sock is the real thing.

* * *

Jack was trying hard.

He is trying very, very hard…to be patient.

He doesn’t like to wait, particularly when there is so much riding on the time.

Especially when there is so little he can control about the situation.

He hates having to rely on other people almost as much as he hates waiting.

He stares intently at the cork-board with it’s map and sad static pictures of happy dead girls. He hates the string tying names to locations. He hates the tally of vinyl numbers, each one a monument to his failure.

He needs to move, do something. He refrains from punching the board…but only just.  
He goes to find Will Graham instead.

What he finds is an empty office, then a classroom that is almost empty save for a T.A. sorting Bluebooks who’s speculation on Professor Graham’s whereabouts is ‘the restroom?’

Lucky for the T.A. that’s exactly where Jack finds her.

* * *

Will spent her morning class feeling as though she were watching herself teach through the lens of a camera. She could *see* as well as feel the sweat roll down her back. As though she’d never managed to cool down after her morning jog. Despite of the shower afterward and the twenty minutes spent in her underpants picking gravel out of the wound on her knee.

She wasn’t hungry, so her lunch break was being spent in the ladies room with her hot face in a sink full of cold water. Blissfully alone and momentarily blank of other people’s emotional static.

That is until Jack Fucking Crawford comes barging in like he owns the place.

“What’re you doing in here?” Jack rumbled as she fumbled around gasping with a fistful of paper towels on her face.

Will stopped and just gaped at him for a moment, before she shut her mouth and crossed her arms, leaning back against the slow-draining sink.

“I enjoy the illusion of privacy.” She tried to load as much sarcasm as possible into the statement. She knew it was futile, but it felt good nonetheless.

“Me too, we have to talk —“

He was interrupted by a soft gasp. Crawford rounded on a woman standing in the doorway in a trainee’s polo. “WHAT!?” He barked.

The trainee squeaked. Literally went “eek” and vanished.

Will was afraid for a moment that she might start laughing in actual nervous hysteria.

She couldn’t though, because Jack was staring down at her, hunched back against the sink.

“Do you trust my judgement?” His voice all serious and fatherly.

She fights the urge to sigh. “Yes.”

“Good, because I put you on this case, and I need to know that you are in the saddle.”

She looks at him, defensively making brief eye contact. “I am in the saddle…I’m just…confused as to which way the horse is going.”

“Will.”  
She does sigh this time. “Jack, I don’t know what we’re dealing with. I don’t know this kind of psychopath. Never read about it, never heard about it. There is *nothing* in the literature —“ She ran her hand over her face, tried again. “I’m not even sure he could be called a psychopath. He’s not insensitive. He’s not…” she gropes for the words. “Shallow.”

“You *know* something about him. Otherwise you wouldn’t have said that the disposition of Elise was an apology. What is he apologizing for?”

“He feels bad?”

“Feeling bad sort of defeats the purpose of being a fucking psychopath.”

“No shit.”

“Will, what does he feel bad for? What kind of crazy is he?”

“In his mind, whatever he does to them makes up for killing them. Whatever he did to the other girls he could not do to Elise…he couldn’t…honor her death. He couldn’t…love her the way he needed to.”

“We found no saliva, no semen —“

“No!” Will raised her voice at last. “That isn’t what this is about! It’s better than that. He wouldn’t disrespect her —“ She stopped abruptly.

“Will?”

“That’s part of it Jack.” She said slowly. “He loves his Golden Ticket in a way that he believes is…inappropriate somehow. So he does this to the other girls to — to…make himself feel ok about it.” Her eyes are slightly unfocused as she talks. “The form of love he has for these other girls is a displaced version of the love he has for her.”

Jack is silent for a long moment. “A sensitive psychopath.” He says at last. “Who risked getting caught just so he could tuck the Nicholes girl back into the bed where he’d killed her.”

Will nods. “He’ll take the next one soon, Jack. He needs to. To keep his…Golden Ticket safe and…” she pauses. “He knows, Jack. He know’s he’ll be caught. One way or another.”

* * *

Will is still thinking about displaced love while Price and Zeller set the body on the table. Katz skimming through the tiny mountain of paperwork from pathology, rapidly sorting diagrams and technical minutiae from the transcribed autopsy report.

Beverly tossed her a tiny blue jar of menthol salve and Will caught it absently, smeared it under her nostrils, then offered it to the room at large.

No one took it. Belatedly she realized it was their way of calling her out as the newcomer. She set it aside with a mild sulk.

Zeller opened the body-bag, Price took position opposite him, Katz stood at the foot of the table, holding the report open in her hands like a codex. Will slipped around them, outside the immediate radius of the lights.

“Petechiae in and around the eyes and fracture of the hyoid indicate COD: strangulation - wrongful death. No fluids, no fibers, no prints, nail scrapings are from her own palms. Four full-thickness puncture wounds all located in the torso. One central cut approximately 15 cm in length to the abdominal wall. Histology shows all mutilation likely post-mortem —“ Katz read aloud.

“Told you —“

“Stuff it, Zee.” Price said cheerily.

“Look, all I was…”

Will began to tune them out, focusing on the eggshell darkness of the body-bag.

She sighed, breathing deeply past the smell of camphor and decomp. She watched the hazy-pale reflection of the dead girl’s skin against the plastic. It seemed to move, resolve into the girl, naked and bloody, suspended.

Antlers. Pierced through the ribs.

“She was mounted.”

Will didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud until the room fell abruptly silent.

“What?” Katz asked.

“The antlers. She was hung from them. The killer used them like hooks, probably bled her.”

“Like a cow.” Price added.

“No, like a deer.” Will whispered, then paused. She had an unpleasant thought. “Was anything taken from the abdominal cavity?”

Beverly is now focused completely on her. “The liver was removed and then replaced, sewn back in actually.”

Zeller butts in; “why would he take it out just to put it back in?”

Will feels her empty stomach roil. “There was something wrong with the meat.”

Katz looks nonplused, but flips through the pages of report, stops, reads. “The liver was found to be enlarged with…with what appears to be a tumorous mass visible on the organs surface —“

“She had liver cancer.” Zeller looks at Will with something like awe.

Will nods. “He’s eating them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got it into my head that it would be fun to to try and recreate the show "Hannibal" in prose form with the two mains rewritten as women. I wanted to see what would change and what would be the same. A few other characters are swapped as well, mostly for plot purposes, right now that mostly means Alana Bloom is back to being Alan Bloom, but Jack Crawford and Team Sassy Science remain the same.
> 
> A note on Hannibal himself, I've essentially switched him and Mischa's places in the story, while keeping as much of Mads Mikkelson's characterization as possible. So Mischa isn't Mischa, but Hannibal...kind of.
> 
> In the end I'm doing this to stretch myself as a writer and to see what will happen.


	5. Cassis

“A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude.”

\- Oscar Wilde

* * *

**Act Five**

*** * ***

_**Baltimore Maryland, Early Evening** _

Mischa had had to wait several days for her meal.

She had elected to let some of the meat hang in order to age, and gotten her hair changed in the meantime.

She disliked the chemical stink left in her hair after a full re-coloring, even if the aesthetic was otherwise pleasing. Her salon used products with minimal scent, but her sensitive nose could still pick it up days later.

She was happy to delay her Lucullian feast until her hair had settled. So as not to interfere with the food itself.

Her kitchen is a quiet sanctuary. A peaceful studio where she can practice her art for her respective audience (which tonight, happens to be herself) taking pleasure in both result and execution.  
She folds up her sleeves and ties on a long, old-fashioned waiter’s apron. She’d taken the meat out of cool storage last night and set it aside in a marinade. Rough red wine and juniper berries, mild French olive oil, Turkish bay leaves and barely cracked Tellicherry peppercorns. A fat pinch of fine white sea salt. A scant palm-full of coarse Turbinado sugar, just to take a little of the edge off the wine. She takes it from the dish and sets it on a rack to drain and dry while she preps the sauce ingredients.

The meat wouldn’t take a good sear if the surface was to damp.

* * *

_**A Dive Bar Near Quantico, Night** _

“So are we gonna pretend we aren’t creeped out by Jack’s new pet profiler, or can we real talk?” Beverly asks as she sets the pitcher down.

Jimmy rolls an eye at her. “Do you think anything we think is going to change *his* mind?”

Brian pours the beer. “Why is she even on this case? I looked her up, she didn’t pass the Bureau psych screen, she flunked out of the New Orleans PD, her criminology specialization is in bugs—”

“Forensic specialty. She does have a Masters in Criminal Psychology.” Bev pointed out.

“So?” Brian countered. “Quantico is crawling with Criminology majors. Ones that aren’t creepy and have passed the pysch eval.”

“Ones who know about words like ‘speculation’ and supposition’ and why they won’t hold up in court.” Jimmy added.

“Like that Bloom guy. The one from Georgetown.” Brian put in, draining half his beer in one go.

“Like him.” Agrees Jimmy, taking a more judicious sip. “Why isn’t he on this?”

“I think Bloom is a friend of Graham’s actually, they worked the Marlowe-Stratford case together.” Bev says, looking reflectively into her glass. “As far as speculation goes, Graham’s cannibal theory does explain kind of a lot.”

“Seriously?” Brian asks.

“Weren’t you the one who got us started on the ‘real talk’ and now you’re defending her?” Jimmy chimes in. “What gives?”

Beverly slumps back in her seat with a groan. “I don’t know. It’s just…the more you guys talk, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if this isn’t Jack’s ‘guru’ thing. You know?”

Brian and Jimmy just stare.

Bev sighs. “Graham’s…different. Ok. Weird, yeah — but she’s not unqualified. Maybe Jack knows something we don’t.”

Jimmy shrugs. “If you say so.”

“Not like we got much else to go on.” Brian says and drinks the last of his beer.

* * *

_**Quantico, Earlier In The Day** _

Dr. Alan Bloom does not look like a respected psychiatrist and esteemed professor of Georgetown University. First off, he looks like he’s about twenty-two. Second, his clothes. When Jack catches him just as he’s leaving his temporary office - Alan is wearing a white button-down shirt covered in a pattern of bright television screens. He’s also wearing charcoal grey skinny jeans and sneakers.

Kelly-green sneakers, made of suede. At least he was wearing a mildly respectable looking tweedy blazer.

“Hey Jack!” Alan greets him with a great big smile as he tosses his sunny blond hair off his forehead.

Jack reflects that Alan looks like a surfer-dude in a suit.

“Dr. Bloom.” Jack says by way of greeting. “Do you have a moment? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

“Sure thing.” The other man agreed. Hefting a messenger bag over his shoulder. “I’m on my way to my next class. Walk with me?”

Jack nods and they walk in silence for a bit. Alan is obviously not going to give Jack a lead in, he’ll have to take it on himself. “Will Graham likes you.”

To his credit, Alan neither stops, nor startles, nor gives any indication of having heard. Simply waits for Jack to continue.

He tries again. “She doesn’t think you’ll run any mind games on her.”

Alan glances sideways at Jack. “I don’t. I’m as honest with her as I’d be with a patient.”

“You’ve been observing her while you’re guest lecturing here?” Jack presses.

Alan stops and turns to face Jack directly. “I’ve never been in a room alone with her. I want to be her friend - a real friend - and I am.”

“It just seems a shame not to take advantage of the opportunity…” Jack adopts the most relaxed pose he can muster, hands in pockets, weight on one foot. “Academically speaking.”

Alan’s expression remains serious and immobile. “You already asked me to do a study on her and I said no. I meant it. Besides - even if I did - anything scholarly about her would need to be published posthumously. That’s basic ethics, Jack.”

“That why you’re never alone with her?” Jack pushes a little more, testing.

“I do have a…professional curiosity about her, but it’s not one I’m going to indulge.” Alan narrows his eyes at Jack, just slightly. “Like I said.”

“Afraid she’ll shut you out if she catches you peeking?”

“Jack, why? We’ve been over this before. What’s the deal now?”

Jack sighs, reluctant. “The case with the missing collage girls.”

Alan flinches, just a little. “Jack—“ he stops, tries again. “Ok, I’ll say this much; what do you think her strongest drive is?”

Jack thinks a moment. “Fear. She deals with huge amounts of fear. Comes with her imagination.”

Alan nods, “it’s the *price* of her imagination.”

“Come on, Alan. I wouldn’t put her out there if I didn’t think I could cover her.”

Dr. Bloom just stares intently, and unbelievingly, at Agent Crawford.

“Ok, ok! If I didn’t think I could cover her at least eighty percent.”

“I wouldn’t put her out there Jack.” Alan’s face is solemn.

“She’s out there already, because I need her there. And I need you to help me cover her —“

Alan rolls his eyes, “Stoppit!” He half-laughs, almost despairing. “Jack, I’m not going to do it. I can’t do it, in good conscience.”

Jack looks indignant. “Throw me a bone then. Give me someone who can do it. I need help Bloom. Consider it a favor.”

Alan sighs a wisp of hair out of his eyes, tilting his head back and aside in his charming way. He fidgets with the hem of his ridiculous shirt and chews on his lower lip for a solid minute while Jack remains immobile.

Eventually he sighs. “Ok…ok… I might know someone.”

  
* * *

**_Baltimore Maryland, Night_ **

The wine had had it’s time to breathe, and Mischa poured a glass.

She set the centerpiece out on the long, gleaming teak expanse of her dining room table. A place was set with fine Irish linen mat, the glazed pallor of the fabric setting off the peacock brightness of her Wedgwood Renaissance china.

The meat was a lovely shade of pink, pale and sweet, striped with a dark reduced sauce. The medallions arranged in a graceful arc around the edge of the plate, surrounding a dark and glistening tangle of greens cut with translucent slices of Seville orange. The whole was artfully sprinkled with a confetti scatter of shallot relish.

She stood for a moment behind her chair, to better appreciate the artful presentation of her solitary little feast.

Beautiful.


	6. Grappa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit! 
> 
> An update!

“There once was a girl,

Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good,

She was very, very good.

But when she was bad she was horrid.”

\- Mother Goose (Also attributed to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

* * *

Jack hears them just before the door opens and he stands hastily.

Dr. Lecter is an imposing figure, tall, broad shouldered and angular. She has a swan’s neck and honey-blonde hair in a sleek asymmetrical bob. Her cheekbones are sharp enough to cut glass. She’s wearing an indigo blue pantsuit and vest with a skinny white window-pane check. Simple, elegant, intimidating. Jack is heartily glad that Alan had told him that Dr. Lecter was a woman. He doesn’t want to imagine how she’d take being mistaken for a patient.

He extends a hand, “Dr. Lecter, I’m Jack Crawford with the FBI. Can we —“

She pins him with her dark eyes. “I do hate to be discourteous, but this is a private exit for my patients only.” Her voice is gently accented, her tone is cool and calm.

“My apologies,” Jack says as he unfolds his badge wallet. “May I come in?” He tries again. Even though he taller than her, he still feels as though she’s looking down her nose at him.

“You may wait in the waiting room.” She says, and glances at his I.D. for a moment before looking again to the short, round gentleman beside her. “Franklyn,” she nods. “I’ll see you same time next week? Unless -“ Her focus shifts again to Jack, “this is about him.”

Jack glanced at the man, who had gone from jovial awkwardness to shocked incredulity in about a nanosecond. “No.” Jack turned back to Dr. Lecter. “This is all about you.”

She made a non-comital noise and turned away. “Franklyn.” She nodded, dismissing him. He scurried away, looking as intensely relieved as Jack had ever seen anyone look.

“Dr. Lecter —“

“Agent Crawford,” She interrupted again, with a graceful motion towards the door. “If you’ll go out the way you came, and come back through the main entrance — the waiting room is the first door on your right at the top of the stairs.” She smiled, stepped back and closed the door firmly in his face.

***

Dr. Lecter left him in the waiting room for a cool twenty minutes. *Just* as he gets ready to think about standing — to leave the building or barge on into the office — he isn’t 100% sure, the office door opens. “Agent Crawford.” The doctor is confidently posed, resplendent in the doorway, her face serene. “Please, come in.”

* * *

There’s a reasonably awkward silence as the agent sizes her up and plans to broach whatever subject he came here for. Mischa calmly waits and considers him as he gathers up his professional persona, pretending to take in the room. “May I ask how this is all about me?” She prompts.

Agent Crawford smiles at her in a jovial, paternal way that would inspire an eye-roll where she less polite. “You can ask, but I need to ask you a few questions first.” He seems to falter a little, a calculated move, she barely has time to wonder before he glances at the door and asks; “are you expecting another patient?”

She raises a pale brow, Franklyn had been her last patient that day. Something Crawford had obviously, already — somehow — discovered. “We’re all alone.” She said with an elegant little half-shrug. Cool and collected.

“No secretary?” Crawford asks and turns to the back of the room, walking towards her desk.

Mischa follows. “She was pre-disposed to romantic whims, and followed her heart to the United Kingdom. I was sad to see her go.” She was fairly certain that Susan was alive, and absolutely certain that Susan was not stashed away, vacuum-sealed, in cold storage with so many others. She wonders where exactly Agent Crawford is going with this. He made a concerted effort to appear imposing. Tall, broad and exuding alpha male from every pore as though his life depended on it. He stood in the center of her office. Surveying her antiques and furniture, taking in the gallery that contained her work library. His gaze finally came to rest on the small marble top table where she kept whatever drawing she been working on or studying at the time.

"These are beautiful, are they yours?”

"Yes, some of my earliest." She gestured at the drawing Jack was holding."That's my boarding school in Paris when I was a child.” She’d been looking them over, to see if any were worth framing.

"The amount of detail is amazing." He set the paper back on the pile. Mischa refrained from pointing out their baser flaws. She’d learned that most people couldn’t tell the difference between good art and indifferent.

”I learned early on that is scalpel cuts better points than a pencil sharpener." She reached out and adjusted the position of the scalpel and pencils, minutely changing the angle to make them that much more parallel to one another.

"I can see how your drawings got you an internship at Johns Hopkins." Jack said as he turned away going over to her writing desk. Dr. Lecter held herself very still.

"I'm beginning to think you're investigating me, agent Crawford." She was studying him closely, thoughts turning over quickly like the cards of her Rolodex. She wasn’t as prepaired as she might be for another body so soon after the last, but if need be —

Jack looked back over his shoulder slightly surprised – or faux surprised – before he realized she was giving him a Look. ”No! Oh, no no no!” he says, shaking his head. “I was referred to you by Alan Bloom. From Georgetown.”

Dr. Lecter’s posture relaxed a little, she huffed a small laugh and tossed her head. "Oh, Alan." She deliberately let the tension bleed away. "Most psychology departments are full of personality deficients — dear Dr. Bloom is the exception.”

"He told me you meant toward him during his residency." Jack said conversationally as he propped his massy backside on the edge of her desk.

She rested one hip against the edge of her drawing table, mirroring his pose with a little more art. She loosely crosses her arms, deliberately casual in her suit and pumps. "I learned as much from him as he did for me." There is a pause as she looks him over. He wants something and he's very sure of getting it, she decides. She can very nearly smell it on him now. She also knows that his profession means he's likely to have something interesting, and Alan generally knows not to send her commonplace things. Now she is genuinely curious.

"He showed me your paper in the Journal of clinical psychiatry. Evolutionary origins of social exclusion.” He spoke as though he were struggling to recall the exact name of the paper. Dr. Lecter had no doubt this is an act, but to what purpose? He remained quiet, watching her expectantly.

She elected to take the bait, “and?"

"Very interesting, very interesting, even to a layman.” He maintained an air of jovial self-deprecation, like the stereotypical uncool dad on every banal television sitcom.

Dr. Lecter could be patient, so she played along for the moment. "A layman? So many learned fellows going about in the halls of behavioral sciences at the FBI and you consider yourself a layman?”

"I do when I'm in your company,” he leaned slightly forward, looking into her I with serious intent. “Dr. I'd like you to help me with the psychological profile."

Now they had finally come to it. The heart of the matter. She uncrossed her arms and opened her posture slightly, every inch the interest of professional. “Please, do go on."

* * *

Will knows. The moment she sets foot in Jack’s office, she know’s she’s fucked.

All the email had said was, “I’m bringing in an outside consultant. Come meet Dr. Mischa Lecter in my office.” Followed by the date and time.

Crawford is standing by his pin board with a woman. A very tall, very tailored, professional-type woman. She is blonde.

Will know’s — with the deep, pure knowledge usually possessed by picky children — that she will not like whatever bait Jack has brought her here to swallow. So she stands in the doorway for a moment, takes a deep breath, then takes her seat. Crawford in the strange woman keep up the pretense of ignoring Will, their attention studiously on the evidence before them

“How many confessions?” The stranger asks. Her voice is low, measured, cultured. She has a faint European accent.

Jack glances at Will, who is silent and drinking her acrid break-room coffee, two can play this fucking game. “A couple dozen yesterday, none with any details.” He reaches out and gently taps woman on the shoulder and motions her to a chair. "Until this morning. Then everyone knew details. Some genius in Duluth P.D. took a picture of Elise Nichols body with their phone and shared it with a few close friends. Freddy Lounds ran it on TattleCrime.com." Jack took a seat behind the desk, and clasped his hands as he leaned forward.

Will glowered at her coffee, ”tasteless.”

The blonde woman looks curiously at Will. “Do you have trouble with taste?” She says, while opening a stoneware bottle. She inverts the lid to a cup and pours herself some coffee.

Will finds herself unaccountably annoyed by the fact that the coffee smells absolutely delicious.

But she is also accountably annoyed by the question. "My thoughts are often not tasty." She prays to be delivered from pop psychology.

"Nor mine," the woman continues in a conversational tone. "Sometimes there are no effective barriers.”

Will just barely manages to not roll her eyes. “I build forts.” She tries to load as much snark as possible into those three words. The woman can't seem to take the hint, she tries to catch Will’s eye again.

"Associations come quickly?” Tilting her head farther.

Will sighs through her nose. "So do forts.”

This time the woman's attempt make eye contact borders on the theatrical. Bobbing and weaving her head like some sort of strange bird. "Not fond of eye contact, are we?” She asks redundantly.

Will find yourself not only *not* looking at this woman, but pointedly looking at the wall while she answers the exceedingly nosy question. "Eyes are distracting. You either see too much, or you don't see enough. And it's hard to focus when you're thinking about how those whites are really, really white, or how they must have hepatitis, or how they got that burst vein. So I try to avoid eyes whenever possible." She buried her face in her coffee once more.

The other woman is quiet for a moment, sipping her premium, gourmet, gold-plated coffee with her gaze cast down. Then she brings her head around so suddenly that Will can't help but look at her, catching those deep eyes at last. "I imagine what you see and learn touches everything else in your mind." Her eyes are magnetic, some strange dark color Will can't quite name. "Your values and decency are present yet shocked that your associations, appalled by your dreams." The doctor leans forward a bit more, that much farther into Will's personal space. "No forts in the bone arena of your skull for things you love.”

Suddenly, the spell breaks and Will knows exactly what she was called here for. "Who's profile are you working on?” She looks back over at Jack, angry and upset. "Who's profile is she working on?”

"I'm sorry Will," and Dr. Lecter does look genuinely apologetic. "Observing is what we do. I can't turn mine off anymore than you can turn yours off.”

Will is in no mood to be appeased, sincere apologies notwithstanding. "Don't psychoanalyze me. You won't like me when I'm psychoanalyzed."

Crawford tries to intervene, “Will…”

Will sets her coffee mug down on the desk with a thump and she stands. "If you'll excuse me, I have to go get a lecture now. On psychoanalysis." She snatches her blazer off the back of the chair and crosses the room and three long strides.

She refrains from slamming the door — but it's a near thing. As she turns up the hallway towards her office all she can think is "leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone” She had invited the monsters into her mind for a greater purpose. The least everyone else could do was let them lie, quiet and slumbering, as long as they'd sleep.

* * *

Back in Jack Crawford's office, however, monsters are anything but quiet.

"Maybe you shouldn't poke her like that Dr. Lecter.” Jack says mildly, taking a cup of coffee the doctor pours for him.

"Does Will adopt your cadence of speech during intense conversations?" Dr. Lecter asks after a moment spent contemplating her cup.

Jack looks at her, his face carefully neutral. "I thought maybe it was a gimmick to get the conversation going.”

Mischa knows he thinks no such thing, but again plays along. "It's involuntary." Profiler Graham was turning out to be even more interesting than she had hoped. “What she has is pure empathy. She can assume your point of view, or mine – and maybe some others that scare her. It's an uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception is a tool that is pointed at both ends.”

Jack continues to drink his coffee, carefully cataloging what she has to say.

"This cannibal killer you have her getting to know,” she once again looks up posted photographs. The ghost of a plan slowly forming in her mind. “I think I can help our good Will… see his face.”


End file.
